The Serpent and the Wings of Night

My mouth went dry. Genra and Isca—Rishan cities. One was even close to the district I had been born in, Salinae. The one that might still hold some of my bloodline, if anyone from my old life had survived the night Vincent had found me.

Cairis and Ketura were Rishan, then. I didn’t need to see their wings to know it from the way they spoke.

“I’m aware.”

“And yet you still walk through that door with her? Bringing Vincent’s human whore to—”

“Do not,” Raihn said sharply, “speak about her that way.”

Immediate silence.

“I apologize.” She did not sound very sorry at all.

I took one more step, and the floorboard groaned, giving away my presence. All three sets of eyes turned to me: Raihn’s pleasantly casual, Cairis’s blatantly curious, and Ketura’s razor-edged.

I cleared my throat and hurried down the rest of the stairs.

“We need to get back,” Raihn said to me. “Make sure we don’t get stuck on the wrong side of the Moon Palace when dawn comes.”

Then, to Ketura and Cairis, “Give Mische the food. I’ll be back sometime soon.” And he offered nothing else before he ushered me out the door, scooped me up in his arms, and launched both of us into the sky.

We flew in silence for some time.

“You were listening to all of that, weren’t you?” he said, at last.

Of course he knew. I didn’t bother denying it. “You made it easy.”

“Ketura is worried and angry. Like many people are, right now. So she’s a bit… sensitive.”

He sounded like he was choosing his words very deliberately.

“If I got all upset about being called Vincent’s pet, or whore, or whatever else they want to call me, I’d have no one to blame for it but myself. Hell, you called me that.”

Raihn was quiet for a long moment. We both knew he couldn’t argue.

“Ketura’s wife is in Salinae,” he said. “She’s scared for her. These are uncertain times.”

Salinae. The mention of the name made my chest ache—sympathy, followed by something more bitter.

I, too, worried for Salinae.

“I’m from there,” I said. “Salinae.”

“You are?”

“That’s where Vincent found me. In the human districts there. It was when he was putting down a rebellion. I’d like…” I paused. I’d never voiced this aloud before. Not to anyone other than Vincent. Not even Ilana got this naive, fragile little dream of mine.

I rubbed the ring on my little finger.

“I’d like to go back one day,” I said. “See if anyone that knew me then is still there. Family, or… whoever. I don’t know.”

A momentary silence. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. “What?” I said. “You think it’s a fairytale?”

Fairytale. Just like I had said about his hopes for the little girl he had saved, the one who reminded me so much of myself.

“No,” he said. “I think whatever family you have left would be damned lucky to have you.”

My cheeks tightened. But I shrugged away from the uncomfortable compliment.

“Who are they?” I asked, changing the subject. “Cairis and Ketura?”

“Friends,” he said.

I craned my neck to give him a skeptical look, which he must have felt, because he returned it. “What?”

They weren’t “friends.” I knew that right away. At first I wasn’t sure why, until I realized that I now knew what Raihn looked like when interacting with people he considered friends. Mische. Even… even, maybe, me.

At my flat stare, he chuckled.

“Alright, fine. They’re… maybe a better term would be old colleagues. I wouldn’t want to drink a beer with them, but I do trust them.”

That, I believed. I couldn’t imagine him sending Mische off in such a vulnerable state to anyone he didn’t trust absolutely.

Still… colleagues. Was that the right word? Ketura had apologized so quickly, even when she clearly was begrudging it.

“Did you command them?”

Raihn seemed a bit startled by that, and I found it satisfying. It was nice that I could still surprise him the way he continued to surprise me.

“Yes,” he said. “I did. You’re good, princess.”

“When?”

“Long time ago. We were… ah… private guards of a sort.”

Now that was an interesting thought. I knew many vampire lords who had their own personal military forces. They went everywhere trailed by a series of stone-faced, hulking warriors. I could hardly imagine Raihn as one of them. They were so blankly generic, and he was so… not.

“Of a sort?” I pressed.

“Closest term I have for it,” he replied, in a way that shut down any further questioning.

We lapsed into silence. I watched the dunes and tiny towns roll by beneath us, glistening silver under the caress of the moon.

Eventually, Raihn said, unprompted, “I don’t think that about you anymore.”

“Hm?”

“That you’re Vincent’s pet, or whore, or whatever. Maybe I did in the begi

My throat thickened a bit.

Such a stupid thing, yet it was oddly validating—oddly comforting—to be defined by something other than my relationship to Vincent. And I knew, for better or worse, that Raihn meant what he said.

“You want me to thank you for not calling me a whore?” I said flatly.

He scoffed and shook his head. “Fuck you, too, Oraya. Ix’s tits. I try to say a nice thing.”

“So charming.”

“I won’t do it again, I promise.”

I made a show of rolling my eyes. But as our conversation faded, I nestled a little deeper into Raihn’s embrace.